In his important book, What It Is Like To Go To War, Vietnam combat veteran Karl Marlantes observes: "The violence of combat assaults psyches, confuses ethics, and tests souls. This is not only a result of the violence suffered. It is also a result of the violence inflicted.” 

"It is no accident that our discussion of moral injury comes at the end of our discussion on moral virtue and prior to our discussion of just war tradition. What is the interconnectivity between moral virtue and moral injury?

READ THIS

• David Luban, "Moral Injury and Atonement"
• Nancy Sherman, Selections from "Afterwar"
  • They're My Baby Birds
  • Recovering Lost Goodness

WATCH THIS (Optional)

VADM Ted Carter addresses the 2019 McCain Conference, providing an overview of moral injury

Complete these steps before you come to class

1. If moral injury comes from doing or allowing to be done something that goes against a deeply held moral norm, should the very business of warfare--killing the enemy--be morally injurious?
   1. Given what we've already studied about the act of killing, is all killing of another human being morally wrong?
2. What should our moral, emotional, and intellectual reactions be to killing? 
3. What is place of forgiveness in addressing moral injury?
   1. Is there a place for simply vindication? (We forgiven someone who has done wrong and repented, we vindicate someone who has been accused of wrongdoing--even self-accused--and found innocent of wrongdoing altogether)
      1. If vindication is sometimes appropriate, how should that adjust our feelings about having killed? Should we be happy we have killed? Can there be sorrow at having killed even if the killing was morally right? 
4. Some scholars have made a distinction between a moral bruise and a moral injury. A bruise is an impact trauma that hurts and alerts you that something is wrong. An injury is something that is truly debilitating. What might it mean to be bruised but not injured over having to kill?